Thursday, February 13, 2014

United Bank Disclosed Less NPA

It is now detected and well established by Auditors that top officials of the bank used to switch off the button which automatically detect bad debts. Since long, apprehension from many corners have been expressed candidly that bank officials use to hide bad debts to book higher profit by making lesser provisions.But unfortunately RBI and Ministry of Finance willfully remained silent spectators of all such evil acts so that people cannot point out accusing finger towards them and they continue to use the public applaud for shining banks.

Auditors said that it is not clear who are behind this menace and this dirty act. Auditors are again managed to write the story of doubt which portrays a soft picture about continuing fraud so that top officials who are mastermind behind tapering of the system are exonerated by giving benefit of doubt.

Here the question is who used to control the technology and the system?

Who are the officers entrusted to monitor the functioning of the system?

Were officers not tallying and matching the system generate bad debts from manually detected bad debts?

Whether branch Officials who are in direct touch with bad accounts did not point out the system fault to their immediate bosses? 

Or top officials themselves managed the ill-motivated task at their end i.e. at central office ?

Each bank and each branch of the bank used to run and were supposed to run  parallel manual exercise for detecting and identifying bad debts to synchronize the mechanized system of detection of bad debts until machine starts giving correct result. 

Why banks failed to do such exercise and who are responsible for such gross negligence?

How the switch remained off for years and prudent officers could not sense it in time? 

It gives stinking smell of  the dirty intention behind such foul game.

It is definitely not controlled by any junior or middle management officer. Without concurrence and guidance of top officials, junior or senior officers do not have courage to play with the well protected system.

Is it not true that top management of the bank willfully reduced NPA to present better balance sheet and then to ensure grand success of public issue which UBI had to bring in the market in the year 2010. 


Will RBI call explanation of ED and CMD of last ten years and also assess and ascertain the type of culture they inculcated in the bank and type of culture they inherited from their previous banks to assess the character, knowledge and greed for money and post?

Will RBI also peep into the performance of those banks where from they were elevated to the post of ED or CMD?

RBI has ordered scanning of new loan accounts disbursed by new CMD, But result of such audit may not tell truth of the past loans which has turned NPA this year .

Is RBI trying to cover up the evils of past ED and CMDs who allowed and promoted bad culture for their vested interest  ? Ti\his is being done willfully to demoralize present CMD of the bank in the same way Congress Party led UPA government is treating Kejriwal led AAP Government in Delhi.

If RBI punished a few ED and CMD  who committed irregularities either in sanction or in monitoring , the message will go to other banks too and thing may improve at least from now.It is open secret that banks are still involved and indulged in bad lending and there is no doubt that bad loan will rise every quarters to come and in all public sector banks. 

Will RBI order conduct of forensic audit of SBI where volume of bad debts run in lac of crore of rupees . 

If RBI can protect loss arising from such bad assets,
I hope bank staff can be paid 1000% wage hike without creating any fall in their future profit.

Second question is whether the top officials of United bank of India were and are so much ignorant about the health of high value loan accounts  that they could not think it wise to test the correct working of their machines.

Whether it is not their duty to verify the correctness of the volume of bad debts. A true banker knows very well the prominent loan accounts which are sick in quality or on the verge of going sick.

Rather it may be said without doubt that it is a well planned way of concealing bad debts and this dirty game has been persisting in almost all public sector banks since long. It is not a story of two or three years as claimed by clever and managed auditors, it used to be there even when machine or core banking solutions were not in place.

When CBS system technology was not in vague and manual working was done in bank to identify bad debts, top officials of banks used to say openly in meeting that none of branch head can declare any account as NPA until they are permitted by top officials on phone. Not only this , if any courageous officer dared defy the verbal guidelines of their bosses and used stick to RBI norms in identification of bad assets , they had to bear the brunt of top management . And without fail such sincere officers were rejected in promotion process and got the most critical remote transfer orders.

Further it is not only a singular case of making less provision to inflate profit of the bank, RBI is well aware how top officials of the banks used to make lesser provision or make no provision for pension and other terminal benefits to inflate profits. 

When this fraud is detected now ,it is now crystal clear that in the past  RBI officials or officials of Ministry of Finance who were from behind the scene working in collusion with top officials of the bank and who used to misguide in banker meeting and who were protecting dirty game of bad bankers, allowed banks to make lesser provision for residual terminal benefits and pension and amortized the same in five years so that huge burden may not adversely  affect the balance sheet of a bank and tarnish the image of the bank. If bad news spreads in the market, the share value could fall sharply and the wealth of many stalwarts could vanish who had invested huge money in shares of the bank.

Obviously there is no doubt that the fraud which has been detected by auditors in United Bank of India was committed by top officials of the bank and it is the duty of regulating agencies and CBI to call for explanation from Head of the bank and that from General Managers and Executive Directors who were mastermind behind the dirty tricks during last decade. Further they should try to peep into the balance sheets of other public sector banks so that the greatest scam of the country could come on the floor and people of India may understand the risk ahead.

All guilty, persons, whosoever it may be, heavy weight or low weight officer, must be punished in the larger interest of the customers investors as also staff working in the bank. Management of United bank has cheated investors by hiding bad assets , by making lesser provision and by showing inflated profit. Even  SEBI should  look into this fraudulent game with investors played by UBI  when they came out with public issue in the year 2010..

Exposure of UBI management  will open the eyes of Finance Ministers and politicians who has damaged the fundamentals of the bank by adopting vote bank policies and by pressurizing top bankers verbally to go for all such acts which adversely affects the profitability of the bank.

Especially PC should be made to understand that if bank staffs are not well paid and if bank staffs are not awarded for honesty and sincerity, health of banks has to be bad.

If flattery is the only quality for promotion and respect, volume of fraud and bad debts in government bank will continue to rise and endanger the deposit of innocent common men who keep their hard earned money in government banks only considering them safer than private banks.  

I therefore always say that as long as flattery and yesmanism is the culture in any bank or in any office good workers cannot survive respectfully and only bad officers will prosper and the bank has to suffer in its intrinsic value. Exposure may be delayed by clever team of corrupt officers for some time but not for indefinite period. Some clever politicians and bankers concealed the health of united bank or central banks or any other banks but ultimately truth surfaced when volume of evil work crossed the tolerance limit. Similarly will be the fate of other banks who are concealing their evil works now.

Is bad loan menace at United Bank of India a cover-up after serious lapses? -Economic times-13.02.2014
Is the bad loan menance at United Bank of India  a cover-up by the bank's management after serious lapses? Sources close to the development say, the report prepared by RBI-appointed forensic audit firm Deloitte suggests serious lapses on the credit appraisal and automated NPA detection system of the bank. 

Sources also say that the report suggests that NPAs were not being detected for past two and half to three years. A senior banker in the know says, "the automated system that detects NPAs was found switched off, whether it was intentional or by mistake remains a big question." The Reserve Bank of India had appointed Deloitte to conduct a forensic audit on the bank. 

United Bank of India sent shock waves across the banking sector when it reported gross NPAs at 10.89% in Q3, increasing its bad loans by nearly three times. However, sources in both the government and RBI maintain that the situation at United Bank of India does not pose a systemic risk. The bank has also been instructed to focus primarily on debt recovery and avoid any fresh loans especially on the corporate side. 

Though the bank is dire need of capital, sources indicate that the government will not be in a position to infuse funds immediately, and this will most likely have to wait till the new fiscal starts. 


UBI posted a net loss of 1238 crore rupees in Q3 compared with 42 cr net profit a year ago. Serious questions have also been raised on the bank's capital position. The bank's tier 1 capital has fallen to 5.6% as of Dec, 2013, which is below the minimum capital ratio stipulated by the RBI 

Even in the past questions have been raised on the governance practices at public sector banks. Sources indicate that the RBI had requested the government to appoint a committee on the same, following which P J Nayak committee to review the governance of bank boards in India was set up in January this year. 

2 comments:

  1. There are directives of RBI to generate NPAs through system only. Banks have developed their own software through which they generate reports of actual NPAs but mark only those which suits them. Statutory Auditors support them. They reports "As informed by the Management & record made available to them......" It will be continued unless Govt. is interested to ensure it in letter & spirit by levying heavy penalty on the CMDs/EDs/GMs/respective DGMs in field

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  2. It is the case of UBI but in fact this practice of NPA concealment prevails in all banks in one or other way at the behest of top executives. If the branch manager protests, he is threatened of dire consequences in the form of transfer to remotest place or non promotion. RBI should order the suitable audit. In present system of audit, the auditors are welcomed by banks like a VIP and the hospitality offered to them like a king to manipulate the figures. So, the auditors are equally responsible for such jugglery of figures.

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